Posts by Michael Gonzalez77

Rebecca Sanders37 said:it's basically the same thing! Personally, I usually just call it self-realization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-enquiry

If everyone is claiming they've reached it, then we aren't talking about enlightenment. True enlightenment—the kind that serves as a genuine turning point toward a much broader spiritual evolution—is incredibly rare compared to the massive number of people claiming to be 'awake.' Sure, the ancient Greeks might have equated self-knowledge with the soul's true awakening, but people often mistake their own spiritual perks for the real deal. Those experiences are valuable, but they aren't enlightenment or the massive potential that comes with it; they are simply steps on a more meaningful path. That path is long and gradual, and honestly, it’s pretty treacherous if you try to navigate it alone without a guide who has already walked that path and knows where the pitfalls are.

Enlightenment remains a rare phenomenon, both today and throughout history. For the average person, it feels almost impossible to achieve—kind of like how it's technically possible for every single person in America to become a billionaire, but given the systemic conditions and general lack of awareness, the odds are basically zero.

Being 'awake' sounds more like someone who has gained deep spiritual insight and is truly conscious of everything happening around them, applying that wisdom to their daily life. People say that person has stepped onto the path, which is actually quite rare itself. There are plenty of people hovering near the edge, but very few who undergo a total inward revolution of consciousness. Even so, there are far more of those than there are enlightened beings, which means they can still work to shift things in favor of collective growth by making wisdom and practical truths accessible to everyone.

urbanwalker72 said:That highlighted point is the core observation: accepting what life brings is synonymous with achieving a certain spiritual tranquility.

Some individuals navigate this through a belief in the supernatural, divine events, or higher beings, while others remain fully prepared to accept reality without any such framework.

This explains why only a select few truly achieve inner peace or reach a state of being "awake"... and if you think about it, they are incredibly rare, appearing across all spectrums of both the faithful and the atheists.

This phenomenon suggests that neither organized religion nor spiritual movements serve as a guarantee for a meaningful spiritual life. If they did, we would see a vast majority of Americans who identify as religious enjoying total inner peace, yet we can clearly see that is not the case.

That doesn't mean the principles found within spiritual teachings aren't essential tools for getting there. The people who truly manage to find that kind of inner stability—those who have actually achieved it—tend to work toward it systematically and with purpose, almost always through meditation.

frozengull2 said:Michael Gonzalez77,

That little rhyme or quote you’ve got in your signature? It perfectly captures how fleeting everything actually is.
No matter how I look at it, it all points back to that one truth.
If you really sit down and think about it, it’s wild how we basically hypnotize ourselves into believing death is something that happens to "other people"... like it has nothing to do with us, even though we intellectually know everyone dies eventually.
By the time death actually catches up to us, all that stuff we spent our lives stressing over becomes totally irrelevant.
I don't even know how to make that point clearer.
How do you even hit people with that kind of force?

Everyone should be aware of this reality; it changes how you see everything when you view life through the lens of being temporary—inevitable, relentless, and final.
You’ve gotta always keep one eye on what’s waiting for us on the horizon...
Once you do that the right way, everything snaps into perspective instantly.
Whatever it is, whatever you end up doing with that realization in your heart,^ you won't be tied down by the small stuff.
I don't know about the rest of you, but feeling that sense of transience gives me this incredible rush.
It throws me into these intense states of mind;
Everything suddenly feels easy and manageable when viewed "in that light."
Everything feels "new"... suddenly interesting.
In that state of deep inner connection, everything just gets soaked in meaning...
Like, say, when you're walking through a landscape for the last time, knowing you'll never see it again.
It's like you suddenly wake up and notice hundreds of tiny details you would've completely missed before.

Those "levers" that can snap us into spiritual alertness are right there under our noses... they're so easy to use if you want.

You just have to try.

I’m starting to feel this sense of transience more than ever, but instead of fear, I’m finding myself aligning with what is actually eternal. There’s no reason to be afraid. On the flip side, there’s this incredible liberation of consciousness happening—a feeling that everything I see, hear, and touch is becoming more abundant. It comes from living consciously, without letting my intellect get in the way. Overthinking acts like a set of brakes; you get so caught up in intellectualizing life that you stop truly living it. You lose that ability to radiate pure joy just by existing, treating life like some fleeting dream that's just a precursor to another one. According to the mystics, there is only one true birth and one true death. This process is really about the death of the ego—its transformation into a divine ego—which essentially means the definitive death of the mind. People are terrified of the "death of the mind" because they think they’re losing their sense of space, time, and the illusions they’ve clung to in this lifetime. But honestly? Those attachments are exactly what hold people back. They cause us pain and prevent us from reaching our full potential. In fact, staying stuck in those attachments is a step backward. The fundamental principle of the cosmos is growth and evolution; consciousness is constantly creating and refining its own increasingly perfect form through material existence.

According to them, everything falls into place like that dream Rumi talks about in the verse I mentioned—a divine dream, really. It’s like an unreal shadow of the divine nature (think of the concept of Maya in Hinduism or the idea of samsara in Tibetan Buddhism), where the main character is God trying to recognize Himself through a consciousness that has been narrowed down into a single body and a limited ego, full of nothing but illusions.

Look, I won’t drone on about this, but I truly believe we need to learn how to detach ourselves from the world internally. It’s like that idea of "dying to God" just so you can actually start living. At our core, we aren't just isolated individuals; we are reflections of Him—the whole, complete, infinite, and limitless essence. That’s our true nature lying dormant inside us. Everything we experience is actually God living through us. Our limited ego is really just a temporary station—it’s a necessary hub for consciousness to function, sure, but it isn't who we actually are.

Death is just the end of one dream before the next one begins—then a third, and a fourth—until consciousness finally sheds all those illusions and dies once and for all, allowing us to be truly born.

electrictinker26 said:It’s quite a talent to claim mathematics holds dominion over spirituality! In this logic, math comes first, then God emerges, followed by the universe, and finally humanity. It’s as if Pythagoras invented pi, which then gave rise to $2\pi r$ and the circle—which is essentially divine simply because of its perfect, unbroken shape. Eventually, pi led to the calculator, which somehow calculated all of humanity. I find myself grateful to math every single day for being superior to spirituality. Every morning when I wake up, I solve an equation where $x$ represents my current lack of enlightenment, and every night, I calculate the statistical probability of actually achieving it.

Math isn't sitting on a throne above spirituality; it's a fundamental part of it, a single segment. We’re living in a shifting universe that mystics call an Illusion. Above all this surface-level change lie laws that humanity hasn't even grasped yet. Science doesn't truly "know" these laws; it just utilizes the products they create. Think of gravity: gravity isn't the law itself, it's just how the law manifests. Beyond those laws lies something even greater: Creative Genius. Math isn't that genius in its own right. We are incredibly small and powerless compared to the phenomena occurring around us. Our minds are so limited that we struggle to understand our own selves, let alone mathematics, the Spirit, the cosmos, or cosmic energy fields. But honestly, that's not nearly as important as turning our attention toward spirituality. Right now, science is wandering through deep delusions regarding the cosmos, medicine is struggling because it doesn't grasp the mechanics of how sickness and healing actually work, physics is lost because it doesn't understand the essence of matter and energy, and psychology is failing because it doesn't understand the psyche or consciousness.

When people say "science doesn't exist," what they really mean is that there are flashes of insight from rare, enlightened individuals that shine through the dark. These ideas are linked by secret connections, but it's a depth that the average person can hardly bridge. What we call "science" isn't some complete, unified body of knowledge. It's just a collection of things we need to move past once we develop the right paradigm—a paradigm we don't currently possess. Instead, we carry around billions of different paradigms, which is really just a fancy way of saying ignorance, constantly searching for answers outside ourselves.

Paul Jones7 said:I mean, I guess you’re looking at intellectual value through this strictly pragmatic, scientific lens—which, honestly, feels like a pretty narrow way to see things. It’s almost like looking through a keyhole, if you will. There’s actually a specific term for that kind of tunnel vision.

I had a distant neighbor who was the definition of a total moron. He could have easily downed 30 beers a day if he wanted to, but he couldn't always pull it off—and honestly, that wasn't even a scientific problem, just a matter of his bank account.

David Vaughn75 said:The real question we should be asking, though, is why the hell all those miracles used to happen back in the day, yet today, it feels like absolutely nothing happens.

The thing is, 'miracles' are still happening right now. It's just that people often have a totally different definition of what a miracle actually is—they don't really grasp the concept, so they assume it has to be some incredibly rare phenomenon or something strictly "supernatural." In reality, we've already witnessed massive 'miracles' on one hand, and on the other, there are even greater, more significant ones still waiting to unfold.

Here’s someone speaking with real authority on this, without veering too far into the fringe:

"Spiritual experience covers much more than what pure intellect can grasp. People often call it a mystical experience. There’s this misconception that mysticism is anti-intellectual, murky, tangled, or just impractical and disconnected from reality. But true mysticism isn't any of those things. There is nothing irrational about genuine mysticism when it serves its purpose: providing a vision of Reality. It’s a state of consciousness that is completely clear; it’s so practical that it can be lived out through your everyday responsibilities. In fact, it’s so deeply rooted in experience that, in a sense, it represents the ultimate understanding of the entire human experience... True spiritual experience doesn't just involve realizing the soul at higher levels; it also requires having the right attitude toward your worldly duties. If you lose touch with the different stages of life, what you're left with is just a neurotic reaction, which is a far cry from actual spiritual experience.

In the spiritual life, you don't need a complete map of the path before you can start the journey. In fact, insisting on having total knowledge upfront can actually hinder your progress rather than help it. The deeper mysteries of the spiritual life only reveal themselves to those who take risks and aren't afraid to experiment. They aren't meant for the person looking for a guarantee for every single step. Someone standing on the shore just watching the ocean will only ever know its surface; if you want to know the depths, you have to be willing to dive in."

~ Meher Baba

urbanwalker72 said:I’m having a hard time following your logic. Are you suggesting that induced experiences don't exist at all?

If they do exist, what happens if they become indistinguishable from authentic ones?

This really couldn't be any more straightforward than it is.

Look, there are the experiences themselves, and then there are the subjective ways we interpret them. You can have an experience—and its interpretation might seem unreal—that actually becomes a real experience. But because it falls outside the scope of "rational" logic, people try to force a "rational" explanation onto it. That’s where they go wrong. To me, the only thing that truly matters is the outcome: does the experience provide actual insight or benefit to the individual? On the flip side, a bad interpretation leads straight to delusion. Think about how science once claimed the universe was just an empty vacuum with maybe a little radiation and some stray matter—to me, that's a textbook example of a massive misunderstanding.🙂

urbanwalker72 said:In essence, truth is defined by whatever the subject perceives as reality. From my perspective, all these experiences carry the same weight, which leads me to believe there is no meaningful distinction between what is "true" and what is "false."

This serves as a litmus test for those who claim they can distinguish an authentic encounter from an induced experience.

If a person finds themselves unable to tell the difference between a genuine spiritual moment and an induced one, we run into a significant dilemma; it implies that such profound experiences could be easily mimicked through something as mundane as physical stimulation of the brain.

Should that be the case, the perceived necessity for a mystical origin behind these phenomena simply evaporates.

Alright, so if they are fundamentally the same, you can't really categorize them as "real" or "fake." If we're talking about the quality of the experience—well, an experience is an experience. But here's my main point: if the quality doesn't match the kind of experience people claim it is, then we're really just looking at "real" or "false" interpretations of some event. Usually, this happens when someone overanalyzes things or lacks the depth to understand what actually happened. On the flip side, if an experience is interpreted correctly, the insight gained is as close to the truth as you can get. And if that experience is considered "mystical" (spiritual), then it carries the actual, tangible quality of that experience (the result).

I get that you might believe "mystical" experiences don't actually exist, and that they're just human interpretations that science could easily explain away. I don't agree with that view, though. I might be misreading you, but if that is your stance, I'm just offering my own perspective in response.

urbanwalker72 said:To put it another way, would you be unable to distinguish between an objective truth and an experience that was artificially induced?

First off, you need to define what you mean by 'real.' Think about it: when you're dreaming, you don't question the "reality of the dream." You’re the creator, the lead actor, and the observer all at once. No one sits there doubting if the dream is legitimate; you just live it through impressions gathered from this "waking reality"—which we treat as real, but honestly, defining what reality even *is* is the core issue here. I'm talking about the distinction between an inherently existing "reality" and our individual perception of it. Our perception is just a messy collection of things we've learned—it's a description of reality, not reality itself. Reality transcends our ability to grasp it, and that goes for any field, whether you're looking through a scientific lens or a philosophical one. Regardless of what anyone believes, we all have a direct, undeniable experience of it. At the end of the day, we're just limited little beings with tiny mental capacities, no matter how much we puff out our chests and act like we know everything.

urbanwalker72 said:casualtiger2, I am curious about your perspective on how virtual reality might evolve over the next twenty or thirty years. How difficult will it be to tell the difference between a digital simulation and the world we inhabit?

For the sake of this discussion, let us assume that such advanced VR—an "artificial reality"—will eventually exist to the point where it becomes indistinguishable from the physical reality we know.

How would you rank and evaluate these three distinct layers of existence? There is the material realm, your spiritual dimension, and now this third, virtual one; which of these holds true reality, and how should we weigh their importance?

Furthermore, is it possible for a virtual environment to trigger spiritual experiences so profound that an individual could not distinguish them from their "authentic" encounters?

There is only one reality. We all just have our own individual level of conscious existence within it. People get so caught up arguing over different names or labels for it, they end up losing sight of the big picture entirely.

Spiritual experiences can actually act as a roadblock to spiritual growth. They don't necessarily mean you're moving forward at all. In fact, they might even be holding you back.

Real progress—both subjective and objective—is measured by qualitative changes within yourself. These shifts are subtle, but you can track them through several lenses. Look for things like an expanded creative capacity, a sense of lasting inner peace, and the disappearance of irrational fears. You should also see a growing love for yourself and the entire universe (God, humanity, and creation), a genuine drive to help others, and a more grounded way of thinking and behaving that shows increased tolerance and a deeper understanding of how things work.

The Gracious Song was flowing through my Heart, and with the help of Krishna (Brahman), I (Atman) managed to navigate through the agony, the labyrinth, and the suffering, ultimately remaining unattached and liberated from the ultimate crime of impressions. 😵

stormyviper12 said:He definitely made an impact, sure. His work has some solid lessons and concepts mixed in with a bunch of shady, questionable crap. 🙂

And the guy pushed some seriously messed up ideas too, like euthanizing kids with physical or mental disabilities... 🤷

Look, I get that he contributed to the conversation; I was just adding my two cents. Obviously, his work isn't "holy scripture," and anyone should be scrutinizing everything he wrote—that's just common sense.

But when you look at his stance on something like infant euthanasia, there's a heavy underlying logic there that makes you stop and think. It wasn't just a random, flippant comment. When I see footage of state-run institutions or long-term care facilities where kids with developmental disabilities—or even adults who have been stuck there since they were toddlers—are living in such misery and isolation, it makes you wonder how someone could arrive at such a radical conclusion. It forces you to weigh whether a concept like that is a dark impossibility or a grim kind of solution. At the end of the day, I don't have a definitive answer. I honestly don't know.

stormyviper12 said:Look, I actually read three of his books before all the drama surrounding him and his work broke out, especially back in Oregon when he set up that whole follower base of his.

"During the 80s, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, known as Osho, started a cult in Oregon. His communities were called Rajneeshpuram.
The Indian mystic was a smooth talker who preached spirituality and love, but he had a massive weakness for Rolls-Royce cars. His followers have been linked to several terror attacks, and they allegedly poisoned the local Oregon population with salmonella." (From: The Strangest Cults and Sects of the 20th Century).

That "allegedly" part... honestly, when you deal with any Eastern Master, anything can happen after 20 or 30 years in the USA. 🙂
As far as I know, every one of those Royces was actually given as a gift, and his students were often quite wealthy people, judging by the value of those offerings. Every one of these figures comes with some kind of controversy, but at the end of the day, what matters is the spiritual legacy left behind—the books, the teachings, the philosophy. It’s about how much someone can actually contribute to your spiritual growth.

Michael Roberts9 said:Nah, 🙂 it’s a song, you just reminded me... before I reached enlightenment, I remember observing everything around me the way they describe in Buddhism. I felt like a pure observer, like I’d actually stepped inside myself! Even in my dreams, I felt wide awake.

It’s basically a song about love—or rather, that feeling you get when you're praying to God. Honestly, I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, I can barely even look at it, but man, it’s important...

People who jump onto the spiritual path and try to trek it alone without a Master to guide them often end up lost in a maze of false insights and fake awakenings. They have very little—if any—chance of finding their way out. It’s like kids walking to school who get completely distracted by the lights and magic of a traveling carnival.

The distractions on this path are incredibly powerful and seductive. They can trick a seeker even at the very beginning, creating a false sense of Godhood that you simply can't shake off without the help of a Perfect Teacher.

Michael Roberts9 said:You could say the same thing about King Solomon. He lived in absolute luxury and had wives straight out of a storybook, but God only took issue with one thing: toward the end of his life, he started bowing down to his wives' gods.

Stories always get twisted by the end. Osho was talking about those dull saints who just sit around smiling all day. Christ was actually active—an adventurer who embodied divinity and Knowledge. He wasn't some passive, boring guy; he traveled everywhere, moving between the East and the West, and was famous during his lifetime even among Buddhists.

Michael Roberts9 said:Osho basically called me out, telling me to get my act together before he breaks every bone in my body! Honestly, I’m not exactly a scholar when it comes to this stuff, and I read way too fast to catch everything. But man, Our Father... that prayer is such a powerful spiritual law. Looking back, my last few prayers felt incredibly selfish. I used to actually pray for others when I was a kid—I was pure back then...

The back of the book says *Lives of the Saints* by Swami Sivananda... So, what defines a saint? According to him, it's someone who lives in God or the Eternal. Someone stripped of ego, people-pleasing, intolerance, selfishness, vanity, possessiveness, greed, and rage. A saint is someone gifted with an equal vision of all beings, a balanced mind, mercy, tolerance, justice, and cosmic love, possessing divine knowledge. Sivananda nailed that description. And he writes pretty incredible things about Jesus, saying He lived in India as a young man and acted as an Eastern yogi. Whether that's true or not, he recognized His teachings just like I recognize the truth in all faiths. Look, I'm no genius, I just love hearing myself talk. I guess I lacked 🙂 so go ahead, vote for me 😉

I've heard that from other sources too. It's not just that Christ visited there as a youth, but that he actually stayed in eastern India for about eight years, where he was famous as one of the greatest interpreters of Buddhism.

Jacob Sanchez7 said:Exactly. I’d recommend a book only if it felt like I had written it myself. Since I have zero interest in writing essays just to get my point across, I recommend the book instead.

I have no idea where you pulled that sweeping conclusion from.
It doesn't apply to me. But then again, everyone walks their own path and believes what they choose. Every choice holds equal weight.

I agree that every genuine choice is equally valuable—provided by "genuine," I mean one that fosters growth and actually produces results. I’m not saying there's anything controversial about that, but just because a path works doesn't mean it's the *only* right way. There are many layers to this, and prayer is certainly useful and even desirable.

What I wrote in bold is a fact; that's exactly what spirituality is. It's a natural process. You don't even have to be consciously aware of it because everything happens at an energetic and mental level driven by "desire." But it also involves conscious contact and cooperation with spiritual energies (sometimes through deities and such). All the spiritual heritage on this planet comes from the contributions of highly evolved people and the responsive help provided by spiritual energies. Humans have become disconnected from nature, but nature isn't just forests and lakes—it's the natural connection to the spiritual energies surrounding us and within us. These energies are our creators, the architects of the material and energetic universe, all acting in harmony with that most noble energy we call the Creator or God.

Think about Tesla. Where did those indispensable ideas that transformed human civilization come from? He implemented them in such a unique way, but they clearly came from a spiritual plane of Ideas. They weren't just "invented"; they were assistance and insight drawn from the cosmos—something that has existed forever. We humans have gradually drifted away from that through our evolution. We've lost that natural access and instead developed a way of thinking that is flawed in this regard. This flaw creates a massive amount of negative phenomena that inhibit us in every sense—intellectually, creatively, physically, and spiritually. A human being is a single entity; the spirit and body are interconnected. Some parts suffer more than others, but generally, it's a universal issue: our spiritual level, our level of conscious development, is still very low and in its early stages.

Look at Buddha, or the Greeks—where did all those postulates suddenly come from? Before that, there was a much lower level of consciousness, knowledge, and conceptual achievement. Then, almost overnight, within just two or three hundred years, these peak intellectual achievements appeared. Let's be honest: no one has surpassed them to this day. As a civilization, in both cultural and scientific terms, we haven't even reached that level yet; it remains an ideal that we can't quite grasp because of problems we haven't figured out how to solve. It's certain that these individuals were enlightened; they received insights that had nothing to do with standard human logic.

You don't *have* to pray. Obviously, a person doesn't need to do that to achieve well-being; positive thinking is enough. But simply through their desires or thoughts, if they possess sufficient energetic or spiritual power, they will contribute spiritual help to everyone around them without ever literally begging a deity or the Creator. That's not the point. On the other hand, prayer is beneficial and helpful, provided that people's desires align with the will of the Creator.

Jacob Sanchez7 said:Give Walsh’s Conversations with God a read.

For me, practice always carries more weight than theory. That book has plenty of both, sure, but I have a different take. Claiming you don't even need to pray feels a bit too modest—it’s a valid choice, but it shouldn't be treated as the only "correct" way to live. After all, the entire spiritual history of the human race is built on prayer (or setting intentions) and receiving answers from the spirit through energy, ideas, information, and eventually even physical manifestation. Even if our modern, decadent history tends to overlook this and the materialistic paradigm refuses to acknowledge it, it's still fundamentally true.